About the Associate Director

Toby T. Hecht, Ph.D., earned her doctorate in microbiology and immunology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She did her post-doctoral research at Yale University before coming to the NIH where, among other accomplishments, she created a unique Hodgkin’s lymphoma-specific monoclonal antibody that was used in both imaging and therapy trials at the NIH Clinical Center and at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; and was instrumental in the development of ch14.18, an effective agent for children with high-risk neuroblastoma. More…

INTRODUCTION

The Translational Research Program (TRP) is the home of the SPOREs—the Specialized Programs of Research Excellence—a cornerstone of NCI’s efforts to promote collaborative, interdisciplinary translational cancer research. SPORE grants involve both basic and clinical/applied scientists and support projects that will result in new and diverse approaches to the prevention, early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of human cancers.

Each SPORE is focused on a specific organ site, such as breast or lung cancer, or on a group of highly related cancers, such as gastrointestinal cancers and sarcomas. SPOREs are designed to enable the rapid and efficient movement of basic scientific findings into clinical settings, as well as to determine the biological basis for observations made in individuals with cancer or in populations at risk for cancer. SPOREs are required to reach a human end-point within the five-year funding period. There are currently 62 active SPOREs located at academic centers in 23 states across the United States. Seventeen organ sites or systems are represented in the SPORE portfolio, including: bladder, brain, breast, cervical, endometrial, gastrointestinal, head and neck, kidney, leukemia, lung, lymphoma, myeloma, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate, sarcoma, and skin cancers.

The program is open to additional organ system translational research, including research in less common cancers. The objective for all SPOREs is to reduce cancer incidence and mortality, and to improve survival and quality of life for cancer patients. SPOREs encourage the advice of patient advocates in SPORE activities.

Mission

The TRP mission is to integrate scientific advancements in the understanding of the biology of human cancer with the development of new interventions for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer patients or populations at risk for cancer, by fostering broad interdisciplinary investigations that focus on bringing discoveries from the laboratory to the clinic, and coordinating resources of the National Cancer Institute with those of academia, industry, and non-profit organizations/foundations to reduce cancer incidence, morbidity and mortality, to extend survival, and to increase the quality of life of cancer patients.

This is accomplished by:

Planning, advising, coordinating, evaluating, and supporting the Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs), which use the P50 grant funding mechanism, to translate novel scientific discoveries from the laboratory and/or population studies to the clinic for testing in humans with cancer, to determine the biological basis for clinical observations, and to use specimens from clinical studies to determine correlations between biomarkers and outcomes in patients

Encouraging and facilitating collaborations between SPOREs, Cancer Centers, other NCI/NIH funded mechanisms and programs, and outside organizations, to increase cross-fertilization of ideas, leverage resources, reduce duplication, and ensure access of resources to projects and investigators

Establishing high-quality organ-specific tumor specimen banks to provide research resources for the cancer research community

Maintaining the Developmental Research Program and Career Development Program of the SPOREs to promote pilot or high risk/high payoff projects, and to ensure the development of promising researchers new to translational research

Supporting research in high incidence cancers as well as in rare cancers

Inviting advice of patient advocates who support translational science in cancer